Popping Off: Say what? 'Metro' slogan ain't natural

Published 10:00 pm, Friday, October 27, 2006

Sounds more like a manicured, effete fellow wearing a hemp shirt. Or perhaps some kind of automotive laxative. ("Flush your system clean with metronatural!")

It doesn't sound like a city -- our city.

To add insult to injury this goofy nickname cost $200,000 to come up with. Seriously. And it'll cost $300,000 to try to drum it into our heads with pointless promotions.

What I want to know is just how drunk the folks at the Convention and Visitors Bureau were when they settled on "metronatural." Because, think about it, most really bad ideas seem pretty slick when you're hammered.

"No, no. Let's hitchhike to Spokane toniiiiiight!" Or, "Dood, you should totally play your electric guitar while soaking in a bubble bath. The acoustics are gonna be sick."

Granted, we're not Jet City anymore (cheers for that, Boeing!) and See-@-L looked like a spammer's fake e-mail address when the "see" wasn't expressed with the picture of an eye.

Fortun@ely, we abandoned that name, as we did "Say WA," our stonerific state slogan, which lasted all of a minute and a half, and cost about $450,000. The only thing missing from that one was the sound of someone hitting a bong in the background.

Clearly we suck at this slogan thing. But why?

Could be because ... Seattle: We lack self-awareness? Or, Seattle: We have better things to think about?

The national media have made fun of our failures, too. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann went to town on his show, "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" in March, summing up "Say WA" as such: "Developing the idea took 18 months, involved a 32-member brand-development task force with a budget of almost $450,000 and an IQ totaling 78." And USA Today wondered if "metronatural" sounded a little too much like an "urban nudist camp."

Nudist camp. That's funny. They clearly have no idea how prudish we really are. Our nudist camps would no doubt have to abide by a four-foot rule.

In response to last week's story on the unveiling of our new handle, readers weighed in with what they thought of metronatural. Some said it brought to mind a word such as "menstrual." Metromenstrual? Um, no thanks. Some early suggestions bore a rather bitter taint. "Seattle: Come look at the monorail," offered one reader while another suggested, "Come visit. You can't afford the condos."

Both are true, but what bothers me, in addition to the idiotic choice of name and the amount of money spent on it, is the idea that we have to come up with some sort of gimmick to attract tourists to Seattle, as though this city is some desperate showbiz entity, clinging to the spotlight.

It's the domain of those whose identities are fabricated for the purpose of commerce. And while commerce and tourism certainly are important to Seattle, metromenopausal or whatever just ain't gonna cut it. Too bad the people holding the purse strings don't know this.

"Say 'metronatural' a few times and you will never forget it," reads the spiel on Seattle's visitor's bureau page as a selling point for our new name.

Sorry, we'll never forget the name Buttafuoco either, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to.

Colleagues popped off some of their slogans for our great city in no time flat, although, perhaps their choices said more about their state of mind than our city.

"Green with envy," said a page designer, after flipping through the pages of Seventeen magazine.

"It's not easy being green," offered my editor, perhaps expressing what it's like being my boss.